Ottawa developing software to tweet warnings in French and English simultaneously

Meteorologists in the United States use Twitter to push weather warnings to the public, but that doesn’t happen in Canada — official bilingualism has proved a barrier to weather warning tweets. (CBC News) More

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In my opinion: This is beyond ridiculous. Rather than alert some, if not most, of imminent danger right away, officialdom requires the government to notify no one, for a while.

In Quebec, so many government agencies and municipalities don’t bother with a single word in English in any social media or online messaging, not even for public safety purposes.

At least the Canadian government uses both languages. But don’t delay emergency alerts when one language is ready and the other takes a few more minutes. A little common sense, in either language, would go a long way to protect Canadians!

Once the new simultaneous software is up and running perhaps they could share it with the Quebec government and cities. Hydro Quebec can’t be bothered to show respect to its English language clients on Twitter and the Montreal Fire Department has been promising for 10 years to find a translator for its online communications. C’mon folks. Where’s the outrage? Your life may depend on it?